Tears Of An Angel
by Princess Pinky
Summary: A week after Patty Halliwell's death, Samuel Wilder finds himself a shattered man, just trying to cope with the loss of his soulmate.


A/N: So I was soaking in a hot bubble bath earlier, when Keith Urban's _Tonight I Wanna Cry_ began playing on my cute little Hello Kitty shower radio. At first it made me think of my cousin, as she LOVES that song and we joke about it being "her song." But as I got to listening to it more, I started thinking about _Charmed_, and when I heard "maybe unfold some old yellow lost love letters" it hit me! This is a perfect Patty/Sam song! (I love that pairing so much!) So here is my second ever song fic, and I hope you enjoy…

_**Tears Of An Angel**_

The air was laden with the smell of hard liquor with the underlying scent of salt and the room was bathed in a dark yellow glow that radiated from the northeast corner. It contained only one occupant, whose eyes were strained with licorice red lines and glazed like sugary sweet doughnuts. He sat dead in the center on a raggedy looking sofa. A dark bronze bottle was clasped in his left hand, and his lips were outlined in a glistening white-yellow liquid.

An eerie glow from the television illuminated the man's almost leathery, tired face and made his week old stubble shine. Had he not blinked, he could've been mistaken for a waxen figure of broken man. The latter was true, though. He was broken beyond repair. He was dead inside. He had died the day she left him. The day he had killed her, or so he believed.

Samuel Wilder slowly lifted the half full bottle of wine to his parched lips. He could hear it sloshing around in the dark glass bottle. The television was down so low that the swirling alcohol and the sound of his own ragged breathing was all he could hear. As the neck of the bottle touched his mouth, he began to chug. It was all he was good at, apparently.

His hands stiffened as the last of the tart liquid slipped down his throat, leaving the bottle bone dry. Listlessly, he let it slip from his crooked hand, shattering into pieces on the floor. He stared bitterly at it. It was almost symbolism for his broken, shattered heart. And then he stood up, and stumbled across the room. Even though his head was swimming, he could still see her smiling face everywhere he looked. Her pictures were plastered all over his walls. Some were even of her wrapped securely within his arms…those hurt the worst.

Sam elicited a little cry of pain as he reached the window. This action had become quite regular for him over the past week. Ever since her death. He touched the curtains gingerly, as if wondering if he should really look just one more time. Somehow he kept thinking that if he did, maybe he'd catch her walking down the deck again. Maybe all of this was just a bad dream. And so with that fleeting thought, he ripped them open. It was hot and sunny outside, and the water was a beautiful crystal blue. He couldn't understand how something that looked so peaceful could harbor such an evil.

The ex-whitelighter's mind flashed back to that fateful day just one week ago. He had been running so hard that his whole body ached. His lungs burned as he screamed out her name. "Patty," he choked softly. His hand trembled as it brushed across the glass that separated himself from the outside world. She hadn't heard him, though. Not yet. She just kept walking further down the dock.

**Alone in this house again tonight**

**I got the TV on, the sound turned down, and a bottle of wine**

**There's pictures of you and I on the wall around me**

**The way it was and could have been surrounds me**

**I'll never get over you walkin' away**

Hot darts pierced his eyes. He could remember Patty lurching around and raising her hands to him as he yelled for her to look out. Sam saw the water bubbling in the lake behind her, but she had been too focused on him to turn around and finished what she had started with the Water Demon.

Samuel grabbed the curtain and tore it back. He couldn't look at that dock anymore. It hurt too much; like it was happening all over again. He staggered forth, grabbing the corner of a wooden table for support. His entire body was shaking. He hadn't actually seen Patricia die, but he had seen the demon's aftermath.

The next thing he could remember was silence. Not even the birds had been chirping when he resumed motion again. His stomach had churned as he darted down towards the water's edge, ran down the dock, and dropped to his knees at her sopping wet body. He didn't know how long her freeze had lasted, but he knew as soon as he stroked her cheek that her body had been cooling rapidly.

As he thought about the scene now, the familiar feeling of nausea overtook him. Sam's knees hit the floor first as his legs gave way underneath him. He clutched his stomach with both arms and jerked forward. He could remember wiping his hand over her frozen eyes. The same eyes that had been locked on him as she died.

It was too much for him. He felt the bile rise in his throat, like the burning magma in a volcano just before its rupture. And soon he found himself wallowing in a sea of clear vomit. All Sam had consumed for the past week had been alcohol, and all he'd thrown back up the same. It added to the rancid scent that had replaced the air in the room days earlier.

The ex-angel clutched his stomach as he scooted through the puddle of vomit, and balanced his weight on the leg of the table that he'd grabbed onto earlier. Hot tears poured down his reddened cheeks, and his body shook like it was in the dead center of an earthquake.

He'd done a swell job of keeping his feelings bottled up in an all too literal fashion. On the day of Patty's death, he'd locked himself in his cabin and turned to the cabinet that he'd only used once before. It was full of hard liquor that he'd turned to the first time one of his charges had died. It was Patty who had helped him through the pain, and it was because of her that he'd locked the cabinet and vowed never to touch it again. But with her gone, he had believed that he had no other choice. The pain was just too great.

Sam had succeeded. The booze were gone now. He'd drunken ever last bottle. The Cognac, Jim Beam, Jack Daniel's, Smirnoff, tequila, and of course dusty old bottles of wine had served their purpose. Now there was really only one thing left for him to do. And so with nothing else left to numb to the pain, he just cried.

**I've never been the kind to ever let my feelings show**

**And I thought that bein' strong meant never losin' your self control**

**But I'm just drunk enough to let go of my pain**

**To hell with my pride, let it fall like rain**

**From my eyes**

**Tonight I wanna cry**

For hours after he had cried all the tears he had to cry, Sam Wilder just huddled on the floor with his head buried between his knees. He didn't want to move. It hurt to move. It hurt to move, it hurt to breathe, it hurt to speak…it even hurt to think. Every time he slipped up just a little bit, his mind carried him to only one thing: Patty.

Whether he saw her bright and smiling face, or the eyes that had frozen on him during her last moments, it hurt exactly the same. Or maybe that was a lie. In fact, it was. If he pictured her smile, he pictured her happy. And if he pictured her happy, he pictured her family. That was far worse than seeing her dead, because now three little girls were left without their mother. No, that was wrong, four little girls.

Patty had always hoped for the day that their little girl would find their way back to them. She'd told him so many times that she believed that one day she would get a knock at the door and it would be the little brown eyed, brown haired girl they'd created so long ago. He let out a muffled scream. She would never get to see their baby find her way home. He'd taken that away from all of Patty's family. If only he hadn't gone after her, if only he'd stayed away like she had asked him to, maybe she'd still be alive. It was his fault.

Sam blindly reached for the edge of the table, and used it to pull himself up. His legs were wobbly, but he somehow managed to find his footing. He rubbed the cuff of his flannel shirt over his raw eyes, wiping away stray drops of moisture. His hand fumbled with a small gold knob on the front of the table. It had a built in drawer. This drawer held some of his most valuable possessions.

He ripped it open, and his heart began to crumble all over again. The smiling face of Patricia Halliwell peered out from underneath a stack of folded letters. Everything in this drawer had been either from her, or reminded him of her. The first picture was one of his favorites. He had taken that picture, and on the back she had signed it, 'To my Sam, Love your Patty'.

He grabbed at the stack of folded letters. Even in his bewildered state of seeming confusion, he handled the letters with the utmost delicacy. It was almost as if he was holding a piece of her again. No. He was holding a piece of her again! She had written a little piece of herself into every letter that she'd ever given him. He carefully unfolded the paper and his bloodshot eyes swept over her small, delicate script.

'Sam, yes you were clear. My eyes were open to the difficulties, the risks, but my answer is still the same as it was when you were still here with me. No one understands me the way you do, no one can.'

The ex-whitelighter's fingers trembled as he looked over the words again. He could almost hear her soft, gentle voice reading them to him just one more time. And then he slid the top letter to the bottom of the pile, and proceeded to unfold the next one.

'What I wouldn't do for what other people consider ordinary. A conversation that gets finished, a night spent uninterrupted. A night with you.'

His eyes glanced heavenward. It hadn't been too long after she'd written that letter did they get their uninterrupted night. It had been the only one they had ever had, and it had all happened so perfectly. They had just seemed to meld together. It had been that night that he knew, without a doubt, that she was his soulmate. It had also been the night in which their child had been conceived. At that thought, he quickly moved to the next letter.

'You can't be with me up at the lake. This demon is too strong and I can't risk losing you, not for myself or the others you protect. They must, as always, come first. You know I'd never face this demon if I didn't think I'd be home in time for dinner to see my girls, to see you.'

Sam jerked away. The letters fell from his hand, fluttering in the air like dove feathers, before falling back into the drawer in which he'd pulled them from. He could feel more tears trying to formulate behind his eyes again. He needed to block out the pain. The booze were gone, so he needed replacement. His eyes flitted across the room, landing on an old radio.

**Would it help if I turned a sad song on**

"**All By Myself" would sure hit me hard now that you're gone**

**Or maybe unfold some old yellow lost love letters**

**It's gonna hurt bad before it gets better**

**But I'll never get over you by hidin' this way**

His fingers fumbled with the dial, first twisting it one way and then the opposite, trying to find a decipherable station. Unfortunately, when music finally did hit his eardrums, it was Eric Carmen's nineteen-seventy-five power ballad performance of a song called, 'All By Myself'. He quickly turned it off, deciding that the radio wasn't going to help him after all.

Sam placed his hands to the sides of his head. This wasn't doing him any good. And deep within his heart, he knew that Patty wouldn't want him wallowing in his pain either. "She'd want me to continue protecting people," he said suddenly, remembering her words from her last letter.

His eyes lifted to a framed picture that hung on the wall behind the radio. It was a photograph of Patty on Phoebe's first birthday. Prue was on her right, Piper on her left, and little Phoebe in Patricia's loving arms. All three of the children had been full of smiles and laughter. He remembered the day well. Patty had asked him to help decorate for Phoebe's surprise party. He couldn't have been happier to oblige.

And then it hit him! That's what he would do. He would stay here, at Camp Skylark, and devote the rest of his life to protecting Patty's legacy. His hand reached up, tracing the outline of Patty's face. He knew that one day Prue, Piper, and Phoebe would come back to the lake and they would be bent on vanquishing the Water Demon.

"But I won't let history repeat itself," he vowed. His words were strong, and he meant them with every fiber of his being. But inside, his heart was still hurting so bad. "I won't let him take Patty's girls." He stared intently at the photograph on the wall. "I'll protect them for you, Patty. I promise I will." He blinked back another sprinkle of hot tears.

**I've never been the kind to ever let my feelings show**

**And I thought that bein' strong meant never losin' your self control**

**But I'm just drunk enough to let go of my pain**

**To hell with my pride, let it fall like rain**

**From my eyes**

**Tonight I wanna cry**

Sam crept towards the door. He hadn't felt the sunlight touch his skin in a week. But now he knew he had to face the world again sometime. Especially if he was going to keep the promise he just made to his lover. The thought of her girls dying at the hands of the watery monster fueled him to move just a little bit faster. And with a quick jerk, the door swung open.

Warm sunshine poured in through the rectangular box. It showered over the man. His pupils quickly contracted, as too much light was hitting him far too fast. Sam shielded his face with his arm for several minutes, before slowly peeking above his sleeve and allowing his eyes to adjust to the new brightness of the outside world.

The sand crunched beneath his shoes as he shuffled towards the dock where Patty had taken her last breath. He could feel his heart rate pick up quickly. He wasn't a whitelighter anymore, but he could still sense the evil that lurked beneath the sparkling water. A part of him wanted to just jump in and tell the demon to take him too. But another part, the whitelighter instinct that still clung to him, told him that he had to stay and protect the future generations.

**I've never been the kind to ever let my feelings show**

**And I thought that bein' strong meant never losin' your self control**

**But I'm just drunk enough to let go of my pain**

**To hell with my pride, let it fall like rain**

**From my eyes**

**Tonight I wanna cry**

"I'll protect her girls at the very least," he said to himself. Before he knew it, he stood at the water's edge. It appeared calm, but he was almost sure that the beast knew he was there. And he was sure that it knew he blamed himself for Patricia's death. But no bubbles appeared along the surface. "You're mocking me," he said bravely. "But understand one thing: as long as I live, you won't take her girls!"

A single tear slid down his cheek. It seemed to hit the surface of the lake in slow motion, causing a ringing effect along the surface. And then his eye caught one bubble break the surface of the water.


End file.
